These appointments build on Altium’s growth in Japan over the past 12 months, including a record growth of 78% in sales last quarter as compared to the previous corresponding period.

In partnership with these master distributors, Altium will expand their sales and support in the Japanese electronics design sector. The distributors will sell Altium’s unified electronics design solutions, the Altium Designer and Altium’s desktop NanoBoard reconfigurable development platform.

The Altium Designer provides a unified view of all electronics design processes. By providing a single data model, the Altium Designer, in conjunction with Altium’s desktop NanoBoard, allows electronics designers to create prototypes, explore alternative design concepts and explore different device options interactively and in real time.

By moving electronics design to a higher level of abstraction and by providing easy re-use of previously-designed elements, Altium allow engineers to focus on what makes a design valuable such as the parts of the design that differentiates them from their competitors.

Altium’s desktop NanoBoard gives designers a new way to focus on creating the device intelligence at the core of the design, without having to make a choice about the desired programmable device up front.

Designers can create their designs using the Altium Designer and any one of the IP cores provided by them. They can then load that design on to the desktop NanoBoard to test, analyse and de-bug it.

Designers can create prototypes in a matter of days, rather than having to wait weeks for custom prototype boards to be produced for testing. They can explore new design concepts and devices using the range of daughter boards available for the NanoBoard. Once the design is approved, a final choice of programmable device and peripherals can be made. The Altium Designer makes it easy to take the design to custom PCB design and manufacture.

The Altium Designer’s unified design environment allows electronics designers to collaborate in real time, with the entire design team able to plug into a single design environment giving them the same view of the design. This unified design approach allows a simplified relationship between the electronics design team and the rest of the organisation. This single data model and single view of the design allows one-touch generation of all the data needed to produce everything required for manufacturing, assembly and procurement.

The Altium Designer also allows for real-time 3D visualisation of the design, with dynamic linking into the MCAD files allowing real-time clearance and collision detection.

According to Satoshi Yamada, Regional Director Japan for Altium, the new partners represent a strong investment by Altium in the Japanese market, and by the major FPGA vendors in Altium. More of the design can be pushed into programmable hardware at the centre of the design process.

Yamada added that Altium’s single design environment makes it easy for electronics professionals to use their skill-sets in this new ‘soft design’ space, raising their effectiveness and giving them new ways to create new designs. The appointment of the new partners is part of the increased investment programme to help expand Altium’s localised technical and sales support for Japanese electronics designers.

According to Akira Houmura, President and CEO of ASCO, the Altium Designer’s unified architecture provides designers with a design environment that is flexible. The ability to combine the Altium Designer with a range of FPGA devices will move programmable hardware into the market so that designers can focus on creating their designs.

Nobuyuki Oshima, Director, Marketing Department of ADT, stated that working with Altium will allow them to broaden their solutions.

Takumi Tokunaga, General Manager, Semiconductor Sales Department.1 of Ryoyo Electro Corporation, is of the view that the partnership with Altium will allow them to expand their electronics design solutions. He added that with the unified approach to electronics design and functionality across the design of hardware, software and programmable hardware, the Altium Designer is expected to become the standard electronics design tool in Japan in the future.

According to Katsumi Harashima, President of Sophia System, teaming with Altium will allow them to provide a better solution to the education that combines the Altium Designer’s unified design environment and their own specialist education solution.

Yasuo Hatsumi, Director and Xilinx Product Manager, PLD Solution Division of Tokyo Electron Device, stated that teaming with Altium gives them a comprehensive solution, which embraces FPGA design and board level design. Designers will be able to use the Altium Designer’s advanced schematic capture, layout and design tools, and FPGA programming tools, to create their designs in Xilinx devices all within the same, unified design environment.

According to Fujio Mizuno, Senior Operating Officer, Sales Department, Application Engineering Division of Vitec System Engineering, having Altium as a partner will allow their company to expand their offerings significantly to the customers and the market.

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